I just want to use this chance to thank the entire Debian Images Team for many years of releasing DVDs that actually had 0 bytes of closed-source code. I have been following the project since "Jessie", and always admired your strict and puristic approach. Allow me to wish you the best of luck growing your user base.
Regards, John. On Mon, Aug 28, 2023 at 1:17 PM Philip Hands <p...@hands.com> wrote: > Birzhan Amirov <john.amirov...@gmail.com> writes: > > > Hello, > > > > Thank you for your quick and detailed reply. > > > >> I suppose that we could provide a tool that would be able produce an > > image with no non-free data on it ... but the effort required to build > and > > test such a tool would have to be diverted from other tasks. > >> ... to contribute to such an effort, then I'm sure the Debian-CD team > > will be > > glad to explain what would be involved. > > > > Just curious, is my understanding correct, that you had such a tool at > the > > time of 11.6.0, but not anymore? > > No - it used to be that 2 sets of images were produced, and which then > had to be independently tested, thus expending a lot of overlapping > effort. > > It is also the case that many people would download the "Official" > images, and discover that they could not actually achieve an install on > the hardware that they had to hand, and then would either abandon Debian > never to return, or would be forced to learn arcane facts about how we > do things before then downloading the non-free unofficial image. > > That may seem like it's not too bad if one is on cheap high-bandwidth > link, but if one is in one of the less well connected bits of the world, > it might be a significant cost to do that wasted download. > > Also, we're a volunteer organisation, and those lost users could well be > people who would have become active contributors if they'd not fallen at > the first fence, which is bad for the future health of the project. > > One could blame the users for getting hold of the wrong hardware, and > tell them to go and buy themselves some RYF-certified hardware instead, > but again that is rather descriminatory, as one might be talking to > someone for whom the only computer they can afford is the one that was > donated to them, and they had no say in the nature of the WiFi chipset > (even if they'd known enough to have an opinion) > > =-=-= > > To answer the question in the other mail about DFSG: No. > > The non-free firmware is still not part of Debian proper, we just happen > to distribute it alongside Debian as a service to those users who would > otherwise be deprived of the chance to run Debian if we did not. > > We've had a non-free section on our mirror network for decades for the > same reason. See points 4 & 5 of the Debian Social Contract: > > https://www.debian.org/social_contract > > It is of course possible to argue this the other way, and we do have > downstream derivatives that ensure that no non-free software gets > anywhere near their distribution, so if that's more to your taste you > might want to consider one of them. > > On the other hand, there are real security issues that have been dealt > with in updates to the (non-free) microcode for the CPUs that run the > vast majority of machines, so many consider it rather unwise to shun > every last scrap of non-free software, even if we find that distasteful. > > Cheers, Phil. > -- > Philip Hands -- https://hands.com/~phil >
